Janet shut the heavy door with a shuddering sigh after kissing Andy goodnight. She ran her fingers over the ornate carvings in the old oak as she tried to calm her wildly beating heart.

“I have to take this slow...I don’t want to be disappointed again,” she kept repeating to herself.

Her eyes scanned the room, taking in the bits of latex strewn about, the remains of the red balloon that had been stretched beyond its breaking point just a few minutes before. The smell of latex also hung heavy in the air, further evidence of what had just transpired.

The buzzing of her phone in her pocket broke Janet out of her balloon-induced trance. She pulled it out, and saw that Julie had texted her. “Well???” was all the text said, but the single balloon emoji that followed removed any uncertainty about what Julie was asking.

“It’s even red….” she mused about the balloon emoji, as she hit the button to start Facetime with Julie.

As Julie’s face appeared on her phone, Janet collapsed into the couch across from the fire. Her friend’s face broke into a big grin as her eyes took in Janet.

“I was going to ask how the evening went, but the evidence is all over you!”

Janet blushed, and explored her hair until she found a shard of latex, just above her ear.

“Hey, now, no reason to be embarrassed! I know Andy, and I knew just looking at him today that he’s smitten with you. The balloons are just the icing on the cake.”

“But how did you know? I understand that with you being friends with both of us, you might have had a feeling we’d be compatible. But had he ever said anything about balloons?”

“Nope,” Janet replied. “But neither had you, when we became friends. I just knew how you looked and acted around balloons, and helped you come to terms with it. That’s all you’re doing with Andy now.” Crossing her arms, Julie then put on a mock-stern expression. “Ok, enough chit chat, I want DETAILS!”

A half hour later, after filling Julie in on her evening with Andy, Janet headed up to bed. She was still thinking about what Julie had said, and how she had helped Janet admit to her balloon fetish.

Growing up, Janet had always had a weird relationship with balloons. She had always hated when balloons weren’t inflated tightly, but had always been terrified of popping. If a balloon was being inflated, she would leave a room. A pop would cause her to jump out of her skin. This had not led to an easy childhood, as it seemed balloons were always around. But then, as she entered adolescence, something changed.

She remembered how, one day when she was about 16, she observed that her next door neighbors had put a bunch of inflated balloons out for the trash. As she walked over and examined them, she guessed they were refugees from a party, their skin covered with a dull haze of oxidation and starting to droop as they slowly lost air. For some reason, she wondered if she could bring them back to life. Her parents weren’t home, so she grabbed the balloons and carried them inside. Using a ballpoint pen, she was able to untie the knots. Finally, once they were all untied and deflated, she laid them out on the bed.

“I wonder which one I should inflate first”, she thought, as she looked at the various colors displayed on the bed. Finally settling on a white one, she picked it up and started to inflate it. As the balloon swelled in front of her, she felt the familiar fear begin to grow inside of her, but also something different. There was an excitement as the balloon grew tighter, until by the time she had inflated the balloon as much as she dared, she was practically panting with excitement, her heart hammering and her skin tingling.

Over the next couple of years, she continued playing with balloons, blowing them up as tight as she dared, and while never purposefully popping them, she would sometimes squish them with her body or sit down lightly on them, the threat of popping them giving her more of a rush. She got good at tying half knots, so if she felt braver later, she could untie them and add a little more air, raising her excitement even further. She still didn’t like it when other people were inflating balloons, but if she were the one doing it, and in control, it was very exciting. However, she hadn’t connected the excitement and adrenaline rush with sex until college. And Julie…

When she got to college, she didn’t have many friends, focusing on her schoolwork. However, she had always enjoyed lacrosse, and so she signed up to join an intramural team. That was where she met Julie.

During the organizational meeting, their coach, a senior from Japan named Izumi, told them that they were going to participate in some ice breaking activities. A bolt of fear and dread shot through her as Izumi reached into her pocket and pulled out a handful of balloons.

“Each team will have two members,” Izumi explained. “The first member will take one of the balloons and blow it up until it pops. Then the second will take their balloon, inflate it, and then sit on it to burst it. The winning team will get to name the team.”

Izumi then went on to separate the girls into teams, pairing girls in alphabetical order based on their first names. However, Janet was oblivious to all this. She was terrified, on the verge of hyperventilating, trying to figure out if she could somehow slip out of the room and escape. Suddenly, some grabbed her by the arm.

Janet looked down with astonishment at the shorter, dark-haired girl who was clutching her arm. She looked wildly around, but couldn’t come up with a way to extricate herself and escape. She realized Julie was still talking, and managed to focus enough to hear Julie say, “I hope that’s ok. I’m good at blowing so you can do the sitting.”

Suddenly she heard “GO!” and watched with rising panic as a half dozen girls put balloons to their mouths and started to blow. As the balloons swelled, she turned to Julie, who was blowing frantically into a yellow balloon, arm still locked with Janet. She gazed helplessly as the balloon got larger. She also realized that, true to her word, Janet’s balloon was getting bigger much quicker than the other girls. As she watched, the balloon got tighter and the color faded. Julie added a couple more breaths, causing the neck to expand.

After several years of secretly playing with balloons in the privacy of her bedroom, Janet knew that this was the danger point for balloons. A couple of times she had managed to get a short neck on a balloon, but only when she was at her bravest, and she had never taken it farther. Now, she looked on powerlessly as Julie added another breath, and the balloon’s neck swelled up to her lips.

Pulling the balloon away from her lips, Julie paused and gulped in air. For a brief second, Janet hoped that she was going to stop. However, those hopes were dashed as Julie gave her a big grin, and said, “Ready? Time to pop! This is gonna be loud!”

With that, Julie put the balloon back to her lips, and added another breath. Janet winced, and was amazed that the balloon didn’t pop. However, Julie, squeezing her arm, didn’t even pause, adding a second breath, and then a third. Just when Janet thought maybe it wouldn’t pop, the balloon burst like a gunshot as Julie tried to add another breath.

“Wow, that was a rush! Now your turn!”

Stunned, Janet was still taking in the shards of the yellow balloon strewn on the ground in front of her when she felt a balloon thrust against her lips. With ice in the pit of her stomach, Janet took the blue balloon and began to blow.

“We’re in the lead! Blow it big so it will be easy to pop when you sit on it,” Julie advised excitedly as she continued to hang on Janet’s arm.

Suddenly, there was a titanic “BOOM” behind her, almost causing her to lose her balloon. She had forgotten about the other teams. She looked back to see a dark skinned girl doing a fist pump over the remains of a green balloon. She also saw that a couple of other teams had their balloons on the verge of popping. As she watched, a purple balloon being blown by a muscular blonde girl lost its fight and exploded into a million pieces.

“That’s it, you’re doing great! Keep blowing!”

Through her haze of fear and excitement, she realized that Julie was cheering her on, as she had continued to blow without even thinking about it. She looked down and realized that the blue balloon had continued to grow, and that a small neck had started to form.

“A couple more breaths and it’ll be easy to pop!” Julie exclaimed excitedly.

She was correct, Janet thought, and wondered if that was what she wanted. Maybe if she left it under-inflated, she could bounce on it a couple of times, until someone else won, and she wouldn’t have to pop it. However, with Julie squeezing her arm, and urging her on, she continued to blow two more times before taking the balloon, stretching the neck and quickly tying a half knot.

Pulling her arm out of Julie’s grasp, she set the tight blue balloon down on the carpet, and sat tentatively down onto it. She could feel how tightly stretched the balloon was. She knew, with the limited amount of give it had, that it couldn’t take much weight. However, she just couldn’t bring herself to do it. While she had experienced a few accidents over the years, she had never intentionally popped a balloon. She winced as two more balloons burst around her, and she looked up to see that the team with the blonde girl who had popped the purple balloon were about to tie off their second balloon.

Just as she was wondering if she could get away with letting them win, someone landed in her lap, and the balloon below her bulged and exploded with a mammoth “BANG!”

Julie, straddling her legs, exclaimed, “You did it!” before delivering a rib crushing hug. “We just had to be a team!”

She jumped back to her feet, and helped a shaky Janet stand up. The other girls surrounded them, offering congratulations and patting them on the back. However, in her daze, Janet didn’t really notice what was going on. What she did notice was that Julie had the same kind of flush she got when she was having her private balloon play, and that Julie’s nipples were so hard that they were clearly visible through her shirt and bra. With a start she realized that Julie had noticed her stare. Julie looked down and grinned. Then she looked at Janet and raised an eyebrow.

Janet realized with a start that her own excitement was showing just as clearly. As the meeting ended, Julie took her arm again and stated quietly, “Dinner, I’m buying. I think we need to talk, don’t we?” as she looked up at Janet with a knowing grin that would become so familiar over the next few years.